Mike Cardillo: Jets headed to lost season, early 2013 draft pick

Updated 1:00 am, Sunday, October 7, 2012

Hey look, everybody, it's October ... the busiest sports month on the calendar. In turn, let's take on a couple topics on the tip of everybody's tongue.

JUST END THE SEASON: One of my high school teachers had this saying pinned to his desk: "A lack of preparation on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part."

That's the philosophical, detached way to prepare for the remainder of the 2012 New York Jets season, which, barring a miracle -- or the other 31 NFL teams all being beset by massive injuries -- will end short of the playoffs and likely toward the first few picks in the 2013 draft, which might not necessarily be such a great development.

Unless you're the unofficial team mascot, Fireman Ed, most Jets fans were realistic before the season began -- before important players Darrelle Revis and Santonio Holmes were lost for the year to injuries in Weeks 3 and 4, respectively.

Maybe, if everything broke right, Rex Ryan could squeeze this team into the playoffs if only through bravo and bluster. Maybe.

Four games into 2012, it seems the team's preseason that yielded one offensive touchdown in four games was the harbinger for things to come at MetLife Stadium.

Simply put, the Jets (2-2) have as little impact talent as any team in the NFL on either side of the ball.

If there's someone to blame (and there always is in New York sports), it's general manager Mike Tannenbaum. His track record of playing hardball with veterans like Thomas Jones and Pete Kendall in contract negotiations is bad enough, yet where the colloquially known "Mr. T" truly fails is the draft.

Since taking Revis 13th overall and linebacker David Harris 47th in the 2007 draft, Tannenbaum has selected 29 players. The best of the bunch is probably maligned fourth-year quarterback Mark Sanchez.

The 2007 Jets draft yielded four players: cornerback Kyle Wilson, offensive guard Vlad Ducasse, running back-turned-corner Joe McKnight and fullback John Conner. Only Conner has been a longtime starter with Wilson pressed into the starting lineup following Revis' injury. The rest of Tannenbaum's drafts are populated with middling defensive linemen likely at the behest of Ryan or guys long since waived and forgotten.

What's maddening, after the Jets lost AFC championship games in 2009 and 2010, for whatever the reason, the team decided to jettison veteran talent without restocking either through free agency or the draft.

As poor as Sanchez has looked with his sub-50 percent completion percentage, who does he have to work with on offense at the skill positions? It's a complete failure in evaluating talent for the 53-man roster, and it's why a high draft pick in 2013 might not even be a silver lining to a lost season.

DUCK SEASON, RABBIT SEASON: Miguel Cabrera won the first American League Triple Crown since 1967, yet instead of being trumpeted from on high, many national writers and news outlets are instead calling the award a relic of a bygone era.

There's an entire generation of baseball writers, front office people and fans attached to the bible of advanced metrics, which devalues the RBI, calling it more the product of where someone hits in a lineup than actual skill.

Trout is a favorite of the SABR community with his league-best WAR (wins above replacement) value of 10.7, which takes into account his sterling center field defense, 49 stolen bases and runs created.

The stats tell a compelling picture, but not the entire story. What do numbers alone, isolated and out of context, truly mean?

As valuable as Trout was -- missing most of April in the minors, no less -- his Anaheim Angels still finished third in the American League West. If you take Cabrera's bat (his glove, not so much) off the Tigers, do they still win the AL Central?

Stats, be they the old-school ones like batting average or the new-age ones like WAR, are a good guide, but without watching the games and placing them in proper context, what do they mean? Baseball, despite all the numbers, isn't played in a vacuum.

"Most valuable," of course, is a loosely defined term and is probably different in the eye of each member of the Baseball Writers' Association of America and all other award voters.

THIS & THAT: Few things in sports are as enjoyable as sitting down on the couch and flipping on "MLB Tonight" with Harold Reynolds and Mitch Williams behind the hosts' desk. A baseball junkie's delight. ... With the amount of work stoppages under Gary Bettman's watch, does the current NHL lockout (yes, it's a thing) even count as news? ... We're maybe a season away, two tops, from NFL commercial breaks being 100 percent Manning brothers.